Despite low civilian casualty rates, Israel is vilified while Hezbollah’s war crimes are ignored
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A large number of pagers belonging to members of the terrorist organization Hezbollah exploded simultaneously last Tuesday, killing at least 11 individuals and injuring several thousand. The following day, several hundred Hezbollah walkie-talkies suffered a similar fate, with similar results.
No one has claimed responsibility, but the smart money is on Israel (more specifically, Mossad). If this was a Mossad operation, we will probably never know all the details of how they managed to pull it off.
The reaction to the event has been predictable on a number of different levels, all of which share a common theme: no matter what Israel does, Israel is the bad guy.
U.S. Congress member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a far-left member of the Democratic party, posted the following on X: “Israel’s pager attack in Lebanon detonated thousands of handheld devices across a slew of public spaces, seriously injuring and killing innocent civilians. This attack clearly and unequivocally violates international humanitarian law and undermines U.S. efforts to prevent a wider conflict.”
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A first irony is the presumption of guilt without proof. A second irony is that one can search in vain for a similar condemnation by Ocasio-Cortez of the thousands of missiles launched by Hezbollah against civilian targets in northern Israel since last October, which also clearly and unequivocally violates international humanitarian law.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres also posted on X: “I’m deeply alarmed by reports that a large number of communication devices exploded across Lebanon & Syria, killing at least 11 people, including children, and injuring thousands. All actors must exercise maximum restraint to avert any further escalation.”
Yet another irony: one can search in vain for a similar condemnation by Guterres of the Hezbollah rocket attacks. Seemingly, it is only when Israel targets terrorists that there is talk of “escalation.” One would think that the secretary general of the UN would take seriously Resolution 1701 of the Security Council, designed to keep Hezbollah away from the border between Lebanon and Israel and which Hezbollah flagrantly violates.
Since Israel’s invasion of Gaza in response to the Hamas pogrom on Oct. 7, 2023, there have been repeated condemnations of civilian casualties and accusations that Israel is committing genocide. These claims persist despite the fact that, as the saying goes, Israel uses its military, the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces), to protect civilians, while Hamas uses civilians as shields to protect its own terrorists.
There have been credible reports of Hamas members disguised as women and carrying concealed weapons under their full robes. Israel has been accused of mistreating Hamas fighters who surrender because they get them to strip down to their underwear, probably a sensible precaution to protect against suicide vests. In spite of these very difficult conditions, Israel has achieved the almost impossible result of one of the lowest ratios of civilian casualties to combatants in modern urban warfare, considerably lower than in U.S. operations against ISIS or the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Contrast the casualty ratio in Gaza to that in Lebanon. The BBC reports that two children and four hospital workers were killed in the pager attack, which is of course a tragedy. (One of the injured was the Iranian envoy to Beirut, which is in itself ironic because it is a conclusive demonstration of the close links between the Iranian regime and Hezbollah.) But, given the thousands of terrorists who were injured, some critically, Israel (if we can assume for the sake of argument that Israel was responsible) managed to achieve an almost miraculous ratio of civilian to combatant casualties.
Of course, when Hamas and Hezbollah make announcements concerning the casualties inflicted by the IDF (or by Mossad), all of the dead and injured are civilians. Most of the Western press continues to accept these figures unquestioningly.
This is one of the cruellest ironies of all.
Steve Ambler is professor emeritus of economics in the École des sciences de la gestion, Université du Québec à Montréal.
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